Marketing

 If a Marketing Professional were to look at religion they might look at it as a “packaging of spirituality.”  In marketing, the outside packaging invites you to go to the insides which means you have to buy the package in order to get into it.  What if the package is no longer moving off the shelf?  The marketer might change the outside look.  If that did not do enough, then change the insides.  You see this all the time in cereals.  Tony the Tiger on the Frosted Flakes box did not change all that much while the buyer became healthier conscious about sugar and good teeth.  So the company just made a lot of other cereals.  Lots of brands and variety, but all cereal.  Religion to the marketer is the package.  Not moving?  Loss of customers?  Change the outsides with catchy signage people see as they drive by.  Not working? Change the insides, that is, what you do, how you pray, who leads, better sound system, comfortable seating, hospitality, welcoming, air/heat.  But religion is loath to change the insides.  People are desperate for inner spiritual formation and fulfillment even if they don’t know how to find it.  So what to do?